The Meta of Free to Play Games -- Donald MacKenzie

Sociologist Donald MacKenzie joins me to discuss his recent article in the London Review of Books, "Hey Big Spender: What Your Smartphone Knows About You."

Game Studies rarely focuses on phone games - but billions of people are playing them. And they are mostly free. So getting you to pay for them is another game entirely.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n16/donald-mackenzie/hey-big-spender

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About the Podcast

Plumbing Game Studies

A Games and Philosophy Podcast

Philosophy is like plumbing for ideas - it makes connections and keeps everything flowing. In this podcast, Graham and his guests are doing some philosophical plumbing for game studies. We'll be asking questions like:

Why are philosophers always talking about games? Is philosophy itself a game? How can we use games to understand philosophy - and how can we use philosophy to understand games?

This podcast will use philosophy to study games and games to study philosophy. Anyone interested in philosophy, games, and how they interact should enjoy it!

Remember: the unexamined game is not worth playing

About your host

Graham Culbertson

Graham Culbertson is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Games Studies Initiative of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC, Chapel Hill.

You may know him from such podcasts as Everyday Anarchism and Left on the Table.

You can reach him at graham.culbertson@unc.edu.